At only three months in, I’m still at that vengeful stage of retirement in which one looks at their watch on a weekday mid-morning, remembers what one used to be doing at that precise time (“Tuesday at 10:37 A.M, smack-dab in the middle of Third Period teaching!”) and busts out laughing maniacally.

I was here when I bust a gut in this manner this past Tuesday at 10:37 A.M.:

Tuesday’s slow ride involved going up Corrales Rd. (not the most fun part) and taking some of the many, many “fingers,” roads, paved and not, extending from the main road toward the Rio Grande.

East Corrales, as perhaps only I call it, is the greener, flatter, and undeniably beautiful part of the village. As in plenty of million dollar properties beautiful, but also just damn pretty to look at.

This was ESPECIALLY true on a mid-October weekday morning with the cottonwoods really starting their Fall work. Once having escaped Corrales Road, there’s also the local predeliction for languid travel, perfect for the slow cyclist.

Roadways varied between the bumpy, gravel type above, to a bit of sand (but not enough to prevent traversing), to fully paved. Very, very hard to pick a favorite, but seeing the most sandhill cranes there put Sego Lane at least close to the top,

while Toad Road might not have been quite as picturesque but with a name like “Toad Road” you don’t have to be.

Also notable was how genuinely nice the neighbors were to me as I wandered through their neighborhood. None of the city disdain and impatience. Early in my ride on one of the “fingers,” I did see a SUV coming in the other direction and the driver stop and start waving their arms in that signal for me to stop.

I stopped.

The driver said “Good Morning” and I was ready for oft-stated elsewhere “This is a private road, you can’t ride here,” but instead the SUV driver asked “How do I get to the town of Corral-AYES?”

Yeah, the Spanish was slightly overpronounced a bit on the end like that.

I waited, considered the possibility the driver was joshing with me in that “you can’t ride on my private road” way and was just about to get to pointing that out, looked for a front license plate on the SUV and skeptically asked “Where are you from?”

Somewhat embarrassedly, “Minnesota.”

“Oh,” I said. I told him why I asked that, he smiled a bit, and I went on to explaining how we, rightly or wrongly, pronounce Corrales, that it is a village, and where its center is relative to where we were.

The ride was all like that. Probably my favorite solo bike ride of 2023, and I’m up to almost 100 of them at this point. This was especially the case when I was laughing loud enough to scare the neighbors at 10:37 A.M. while looking at this.